Whoops!

In my last post, I mistakenly referred to the list of songs as "the Best Singles of 2008." To be perfectly honest, though, it should have been called, "A List of My Favorites Songs, Out of All The Songs I've Heard This Year, Excluding Any Genres That I Don't Particularly Care For."

You know, to differentiate my list from all of the real "Best Of" lists, which are of course all-inclusive and completely impartial.

It's the Best (of) Time of the Year!

Yes, it's that time of year when bloggers the world over join together in celebrating how much better their tastes (be they musical, literary, theatrical or otherwise) are than yours. I'm always willing to jump on a bandwagon when it looks like it's going my way, so here is my preliminary list of the best singles 2008 had to offer. This list is arranged alphabetically, as I haven't yet decided which singles were the most important - and also to hide how many times the Mountain Goats show up - but rest assured, there's a numbered list coming soon.

(note to Blogger: formatting tables is about 120 times more difficult than it needs to be.)

Track

Artist

A-Punk

Vampire Weekend

After All (ft. Talib Kweli)

Lupe Fiasco

All Night

Damian Marley

Balance

The Mountain Goats

Believe

The Bravery

The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton

The Mountain Goats

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend

Ching-A-Ling

Missy Elliot

Evil Urges

My Morning Jacket

Fault Lines

The Mountain Goats

Funplex

The B-52's

Heretic Pride

The Mountain Goats

I Will Possess Your Heart (Radio Edit)

Death Cab For Cutie

Immigrant Punk

Gogol Bordello

In A Cave

Tokyo Police Club

Jesus, Walk with Me (Sound of Arrows remix)

Club 8

Less Talk More Rokk (Album Version)

Freezepop

Let The Drummer Kick

Citizen Cope

Lost Coastlines

Okkervil River

Lovecraft In Brooklyn

The Mountain Goats

Machine Gun

Portishead

Me And Armini

Emiliana Torrini

The Mess Inside

The Mountain Goats

The Modern Leper

Frightened Rabbit

My Moon, My Man (Grizzly Bear remix)

Feist

Old Enough

The Raconteurs

The Places We Lived

Backyard Tire Fire

Poke

Frightened Rabbit

Regret

Wye Oak

San Bernardino

The Mountain Goats

Sax Rohmer #1

The Mountain Goats

Say Hey (I Love You)

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Shitewrecked

Urchin

Starálfur

Sigur Rós

Top Yourself (Album Version)

The Raconteurs

Valerie Plame

The Decemberists

We Got The Power (Love Letter From America)

Born Again Floozies

White Winter Hymnal

Fleet Foxes

Working Class Hero

Exit Clōv

You've Done It Again Virginia

The National

10 Tons Of Dope (Featuring Dillinger)

Sounds From The Ground

Dear Amazon.com MP3 Store:

I just thought you should know that the more you insist that, "Customers Who Bought Items in [my] Recent History Also Bought," Viva La Vida by Coldplay, the less inclined I am to actually listen to or purchase it.

And the same goes double for Nickelback. Seriously, Nickelback?

30 Seconds of Lighting Nerdiness

Strand Lighting dealers, represent!

Dorothy Knows How I Feel

(Click for a read-able version of the strip.)

Dorothy over at "Cat and Girl" captures the feeling I was trying to get across in my last post.

Oh yeah, there was an election this week.

President-elect Barack Obama fist-bumping a five-year-old.

I really don't want to say anything cynical about the guy before he's even in office, so let's just enjoy the photo.

(Click the picture to see a whole series of great shots over at the Boston Globe web site.)

Separating Fools From Money

The more I visit Las Vegas, the more I realize that it's no such much a city as a collection of very fine mesh sieves designed to separate visitors from their money as quickly and totally as possible. Exhibit A (at left) is a vending machine, just off the casino floor, that vends iPods (in both Touch and Nano flavors) Sony PSP game systems and games, and other electronics and electronics accessories.

I have to say, I like the creativity shown here. I haven't been to many other casinos yet, so I don't know if this is a common fixture, or if it was installed here at when the Hilton was still home to the coolest geek attraction in Vegas.

Zip Line Tourism

There's an interesting article over at BLDBLOG about zip lines - the cable "rides" made popular by outdoors camps such as Outward Bound. The writer describes a growing trend in which zip lines are used as thrill rides (whipping down a ski slope in the off-season at 50mph) as well as a means of getting up-close with the Autumn foliage in rural Pennsylvania.

Things really get interesting, though, when he imagines zip lines as a new way to see cities and monuments typically viewed only at tour-bus-level.

"In the same way that you can take, for instance, Entourage-themed bus tours of Los Angeles, you could take Spiderman-themed zip line tours of New York. "

link: Zip Line Tours Through City Space

Tai Shan, Sooperpanna

Oh my goodness:



"Sooperpanna Dr. Tai Shan Xiang-Tian Ph.D gives a friendly wave while dressed in his astronaut launch and entry suit. "

See the rest of the set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45944933@N00/sets/72157604100340985/

Oh Man, Water Bears

The Wired Science blog ran a story yesterday about tardigrades, probably my favorite almost-microscopic eight-legged invertebrates. It seems that last year some scientists sent a bunch of the lovable little critters up on a satellite to be exposed to cosmic rays, solar radiation and the "frigid vacuum of space." (Wired Science refers to this as "shoot[ing] tardigrades into naked orbit." Heh.)

It seems that, along with being COMPLETELY ANERABLE(!) a water bear can slow its biological processes to almost a complete stop, withstand extremes of heat and cold, and, as if that weren't enough, it can repair some forms of genetic damage.

You'd think that, with everything going for it, the water bear would garner more scientific attention than it has. That may change in the near future, though. Following the success of (and perhaps spurred by) the Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS) project, biologists with the National Human Genome Research Institute are planning to sequence the genome of one species of tardigrade. For now, though, there are only around 100 scientists around the world studying these amazing creatures.

In Other Depressing News...

Pretty much my only reason for going to Vegas is no more. "Star Trek: The Experience," at the Las Vegas Hilton closed on Monday, September 1.

Link to story at CNN.com.

Link to KLAS-TV (Las Vegas nOw!) with video.

I'm sad to see the attraction go, especially Quark's restaurant (no more Warp Core Breach! no more Wrap of Khan!) Even so, I couldn't help but chuckle at a few WTF-worthy moments in KLAS's report, like the staff cheering and clapping enthusiastically just before their final performance (it's the LAST time I have to pretend to understand Klingon!) and the manager of ST:TE claiming that, "there are people who feel that Star Trek cured their cancer."

Hey Last.FM! WTF Happened to My Playlist?

It looks like I'm not the only one who hates the new Last.FM. I'm not all that upset about the new look, actually, but I noticed the other day that the playlist I'd spent a year accumulating had mysteriously disappeared from the Last.FM software. I logged into my page at the site and, after a good bit of digging around I find this:




Do what now? I have to pay USD$3.00/month to listen to my playlist? Thanks, but no thanks, guys.

UPDATE: After doing some more reading, it now appears that I can still play the songs on my playlist provided that (a) they're available as full-length tracks and not just 30-second previews and (b) I don't mind either listening to my entire library in the order that I created it and further (c) I'm okay with going to my Last.FM page at the end of each song and clicking the PLAY button to hear the next song. Or I can listen to "My Library," but that's a can of worms I'm not looking to open right now.

GYWO:TAS

Get Your War On, the animated series. Gettin' all up in your terrorist watch list.

Currently Reading: The World Without Us

" 'If you want to destroy a barn,' a farmer once told me,
'cut an eighteen-inch-square hole in the roof.
Then stand back."
- architect Chris Riddle
Amherst, Massachusetts

I was reading some of the online responses to "Life After People" a few weeks ago, and I noticed that a lot of people (including one of the rare commenters I get here) referred to a book called The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. Intrigued, I checked it out of the local library and have finally started reading it. It seems pretty well-researched, and so far is at least as interesting to me as was the program.

Fair warning: chapter two, "Unbuilding Our Home," can cause nightmares for new homeowners (like me). The quote above, which introduces that chapter, should give you an idea of the horrors that await. An excerpt from the text:

"No matter how hermetically you've sealed your temperature-tuned interior from the weather, invisible spores penetrate anyway, exploding in sudden outbursts of mold - awful when you see it, worse when you don't, because it's hidden behind a painted wall, munching paper sandwiches of gypsum board, rotting studs and floor joists. Or you've been colonized by termites, carpenter ants, roaches, hornets or even small mammals."

Yikes.

Here Comes the Primary

When it comes to politics, I'm usually pretty apathetic. So much so that, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, I sometimes suspect I'm arriving from the other direction as an activist. Anyway, the "Potomac Primary" (Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland) is coming up next Tuesday and I normally wouldn't bother even thinking about it except that it's a good excuse to post this little guy. I actually drew him a few years ago, while running sound for a very politically-active production that we were doing in Baltimore. Enjoy.

Correction Time

I was talking with my family this evening about the subject of last night's post. I mentioned how surprised I was at the development that had happened around Pirmasens since we lived there.

"We didn't live in Pirmasens," they told me. We lived in Höheischweiler." I did some research on Göögle and can see my mistake. The US Army Base was located in Pirmasens. The little town I was thinking of was Höheischweiler, which also had a Ringstrasse. It's apparently a pretty common street name. Hey! Let's look at another map!



Whoops! Google Maps is still b0rked!

Fun Fact! The local brewery around Pirmasens was Park & Bellheimer. I still have some Park coasters, but have long since misplaced my mugs. Henry had a job at the brewery for a few weeks in the mid-70s, but was let go after he drank too many beers on the job and, I believe, wrecked a forklift. We never got the full story out of him.

Where I'm From

I was posting this picture of me, age 7 or so, to my Flickr account and I wasn't sure I remembered how to spell the name of the town in which it was taken.

I hit up Google Maps and tried my best recollection of the name of the town: Pirmasens, Germany.

I had the spelling correct, by the way, and I'm pretty sure this picture was taken there, when we were living in an apartment on Ringstraße ("Ring Street"). I would have totally flubbed that spelling if not for Google Maps, I always thought it was two words: Ring Strasse.

What do you from me? I was just a little kid!

I was surprised to see how urbanized that little town is. Maybe it's just my fuzzy memories of childhood, but when I think back to that time, I see a small neighborhood, not the city that Google showed me.

Finally, I also discovered that I can embed Google Maps into my posts, so you can look forward to lots more thrilling images like this:

Whoops! The Google Maps Link is B0rked!

Vampire Weekend

I snagged a few tracks from Vampire Weekend's debut album this wee...a day or so ago, and some of their stuff is pretty okay. I'm just not crazy about everything I've heard. I realize that I'm no longer part of the modern music scene but I just don't dig "Oxford Comma" or "Mansard Roof" - two of the more popular singles according to the blogs I've been reading. "A-Punk," and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," however, are fun little pop songs that I'm happy to have with me during my morning commute.

I'll leave serious commentary to folks dedicated to music blogging. Here! Look at this video!

What I've Learned from Web Comics

A few random thoughts while I wait for AVG to finish scanning for "threats." Like most office drones I spend my lunch break surfing the internet. Unlike most office drones, I don't spend my lunch break at Something Awful, MySpace, or CNN.com; I read web comics. Over the years, I've been introduced to new foods, bands, fads and artists through the comics I read. Here's a quick list of some of them:

Cat and Girl: Dorothy introduced me to Joseph Beuys and Chris Burden, and generally reminds me to keep be more open to contemporary art. (Also, not to drink paint.)

Achewood: Onstad has introduced me to new ideas in food and cooking (usually via one of the in-character blogs) and is the only artist I can think of to use risotto as a punch line. He also provides me with useful insights into fads, food, cars, and technology.

Overcompensating: I've found out about a bunch of music via the Dumbrella forums, which I started reading because of Wigu and, later, Overcompensating (which I can never spell right on the first try). I blame Dumbrella for the fact that I now own a couple of White Stripes CDs, and some "gangsta rap" singles. Jeffrey himself serves as a constant reminder that Oklahoma occasionally does produce decent, talented people. And then they move out-of-state as soon as possible.

XKCD usually sends me up to the Google bar to look up some math or computer science reference that I just don't get. To be fair, there is a clear warning on the site that the comics occasionally contain "advanced mathematics...which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors" It also reminds me to watch out for velociraptors.

RE: Life After People

I just finished watching The History Channel's "Life After People," a show I've been looking forward to for a while now. I have a feeling that it was more interesting than accurate - in the way that History/TLC/Discovery programs are these days - and it was no doubt intended to exploit the interest generated by the recent glut of apocalyptic movies such as "Cloverfield", "I Am Legend," and "The Mist." But for all of that it did provide some interesting ideas that I'll be processing in the days to come.


The premise of the show is this: every human being on the planet disappears, simultaneously, overnight. Various experts, researchers, and theorists consider the fate of the planet from 1 day after the event to 10,000 years out. The visuals are a combination of documentary footage of actual abandoned structures and cities - including a fantastic segment inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone - and CGI effects of some of the world's best-known structures and cities collapsing into decay.

Overall, I think the producers were pretty optimistic about how quickly Nature will reclaim even large urban centers like Chicago and Manhattan, and pretty pessimistic about how much of human civilization will survive even the first 100 or so years.

The History Channel will air an encore presentation of "Life After People" this Wednesday.

**SPOILERS**

The first fifteen minute segment of the show (covering from the first day without people to a year or so out) were pretty hard for me to watch. I have two small dogs, and all of the experts agreed that those guys will be the first to go. The ones that don't starve to death, locked inside our houses, will most likely be unable to compete successfully for food in the wild. The video for this segment kept cutting back to a family dog trapped in a suburban house, looking hopefully out the front window, drinking the meltwater from the freezer after the power shuts off, and finally tearing open a package of bread for food because, as one expert felt obliged to point out, "dogs can't open cans."

Personally, I think my favorite years are a few hundred years after people: skyscrapers are still standing, but they have been transformed into high-rise forests, with abundant wildlife including, possibly, flying cats. Yes. Flying cats. For me, that thought alone was worth the cost of admission.

**EXTRA SPOILER** About two-thirds through the first segment that dog miraculously escapes from the house. Just in time for the experts to start explaining how he won't be able to survive in the wild.